Electronic Phytosanitary Certificates: ePhyto
Quick Facts About Electronic Phytosanitary Certificates
What is a Phytosanitary Certificate?
A phytosanitary certificate is an official document issued to exporters of plants and or plant products whose products meet standard requirements of the target market.
What makes the phytosanitary Certificate important?
The phytosanitary certificate is used to determine whether or not the exports are acceptable in the target market.
How is assessment of compliance done?
Country level assessment of the level of compliance is done through the National Plant Protection Organization of the country of origin.
In Uganda, the National Plant Protection Organization is the Department of Crop Inspection and Certification under the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries.
Which steps can farmers take to ensure that products meet phytosanitary standards?
The Ministry issued a series of pre-audit checklists to allow farmers and traders to undertake regular self-audit.
These can also be accessed in soft copy on this website.
Click here for checklists for Fruit and Vegetable Pack Houses
Which international law backs inspection for compliance to phytosanitary standards?
The process of inspection and certification aimed at helping exporters to gain competitiveness and penetrate international markets is backed by the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) of 1997.
Article V.2a states as follows:
"Inspection and other related activities leading to issuance of phytosanitary certificates shall be carried out only by or under the authority of the official national plant protection organization.
The issuance of phytosanitary certificates shall be carried out by public officers who are technically qualified and duly authorized by the official national plant protection organization to act on its behalf and under its control with such knowledge and information available to those officers that the authorities of importing contracting parties may accept the phytosanitary certificates with confidence as dependable documents."
The process for certification has been made easy by the introduction of the ePhyto that allows for online access to the certification process.
Please click the link below to visit the ePhyto portal for Uganda.
A copy of the standard training manual for newly registered companies is available here:
